Robert Tchenguiz tells the Sunday Telegraph how he plans to put his
business back together and make sure the SFO is held to account.

Robert Tchenguiz is struggling to move on. Sitting on the fifth floor of his Mayfair office block, Tchenguiz is still dwelling on the day he was arrested by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

More than 18 months have passed since the morning in March last year that 130 officers raided the home and offices of him, his brother Vincent and his colleagues.

Millions of pounds have been spent in legal fees to clear his name. The botched investigation has shredded the reputation of the SFO while clearing the Tchenguiz brothers of any wrongdoing.

Despite all that has happened, in one crucial and painful way, nothing has changed. "What we said when I was arrested is what we are saying now," Tchenguiz explains, reading the press release put out on the day he was arrested. "I hold the SFO responsible for loss and damage which my family, my business and my reputation have suffered."

While there is satisfaction in his voice, satisfaction that he has been entirely vindicated in the position he took last year, there is also anger.

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As Tchenguiz explains, in the seven years leading up to his arrest he did nearly 60 deals, each averaging over £100m.

Since his arrest he has done none. "Once you are arrested, your world changes, business stops. The experience of being arrested is not something that you can take lightly.

"Socially it affects your life. People don't know if you are right or wrong. The way the SFO did it, it was like a slam dunk, like they had all the information. Your business world ceases to exist. Any business, future, unfinished, if you are a buyer, seller, it all stops.

"Nobody wants to deal with someone that has this cloud over their head – especially when it comes from the SFO. This is not a driving offence."

Tchenguiz is still assessing the impact of the arrest. It is two weeks since the investigation against him was dropped, which he says is too soon to know whether he can rebuild his business empire.

He has lost key lieutenants in Aaron Brown and Mark Grunnell. His staffing numbers have fallen by 80pc and the strength of his relationships with key City institutions has been severely tested. "When you arrest a businessman it stays with you forever," he says.

His anger is understandable, understated even. While he lost much through the credit crisis and his subsequent arrest, Tchenguiz is still a palpably rich man. He has the property, the yacht, and the friends that mark him apart. He also has an obvious hunger to rebuild his empire. Before that happens it is clear something else must happen. The man Tchenguiz holds responsible for the past 18 months must be held to account.

It was Richard Alderman, the previous director of the SFO, who was widely seen as the driving force behind the action taken against both of the Tchenguiz brothers.

Alderman spent three years poking through the rubble of the financial crisis, but failed to uncover a case that could be brought against any of the UK banks. So he turned to their Icelandic counterparts.

Armed with information supplied by accountants Grant Thornton, the SFO opened an investigation into Kaupthing, the Tchenguiz brothers and six other individuals connected to the bank.

The investigation focused on allegations the brothers and their business partners had acted fraudulently in securing hundreds of millions of pounds of loans from the bank. The evidence against the brothers must have seemed compelling to Alderman. He mounted one of the biggest investigations ever undertaken by the SFO.

But within days of the arrests taking place, the case started to fall apart.

It emerged the SFO failed to check much of the information given to them by Grant Thornton. They had failed to explore the obvious conflict of interest represented by the fact Grant Thornton was working for the same bank, Kaupthing, that the Tchenguiz brothers were suing.

Tchenguiz believes that Alderman "wanted to go after the rich, that was me and my brother".

He draws attention to the ruling by Lord Justice Thomas, the senior High Court judge who oversaw a judicial review into the work of the SFO. The judge found Alderman and the SFO acted incompetently, failed to understand the type of business they were investigating and, worse, had acted "unlawfully". "We were just two high profile individuals who he [Alderman] could slam with our parties and so forth," says Tchenguiz. "This was someone looking for his knighthood."

Alderman has consistently refused to comment since leaving the SFO, but close friends defended him. "The place Richard is in at the moment is a long way away from a knighthood," said one. "He admits the SFO made a total hash of the investigation but there were no ulterior motives."

That may not be enough for Tchenguiz. As well as planning legal action against the SFO, he would like Alderman to answer for his mistakes, in much the same way as bankers have been forced to account for their actions in front of MPs.

"My biggest issue here is that people that take on these decisions should be responsible for them, not that they retire," he said. "They cannot annihilate people's lives and then sit in the country and get their gold-plated pensions."

While the anger and desire for retribution is still fresh, Tchenguiz realises that life pre-March 2011 has to resume.

He is rebuilding his team, looking for new deals and the financial backing to make them work.

Two weeks ago it was reported that Tchenguiz was close to completing a deal to buy the building housing Santander's Madrid headquarters. The deal could be the catalyst he needs to push further deals through.

"Hopefully we will get going with our business again," says Tchenguiz, adding: "It is an opportune time to do business. If you have capital behind you there are interesting things to do and the market has shrunk.

"If there were 100 players back in 2006 there are maybe just three now."

Tchenguiz believes that for the world to wake up to the injustice done to him and his brother, there needs to be a sign of the SFO's mistakes, which could be the damages payment he is seeking.